Communicating With Parents


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Holly Gardner

Holly Gardner is TT Editor, as well as a Freelance Publisher. She has been working with @TeacherToolkit for over 6 years - since she published his first book in her role as Senior Commissioning Editor at Bloomsbury Publishing. Since then, she left her day job,...
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How can schools improve communication with parents?

How effectively does your school communicate with parents? If you send a child home with a letter, how likely is it to reach the child’s parents? How do you know? And what about emails? Can you guarantee that they get delivered or read? Maybe you send text messages instead. But what is this costing you? What if you were to ‘Put It On The App’ instead?

Piota:

Piota makes clever customised apps for schools, designed to eliminate missed communication, save time and cut costs. Content can include images, videos, PDFs and calendars, allowing schools to engage in rich communication with parents. 

Piota customises each school’s app so that the finished product genuinely reflects the school’s identity. Parents can instantly access important information, including calendars, timetables and contact details. The school can update information in real-time and send parents instant notifications at the touch of a button.

Features:

The school app allows you to send quick surveys in order to get a snapshot of how parents and pupils are feeling, gathering data for governors and OfSTED. Staff can upload information about curriculum and homework tasks, including links to video and audio resources. Teachers can even share photos of what is happening in lessons, so that parents can get a feel for what their child is experiencing during the school day.

Parents can select which push notifications they receive, so that they are only alerted to information that is relevant to their child. Users can even manage permission slips, replies and forms through the app, dramatically improving the response rate from parents.

Fully-customised apps that reflect your school’s brand, not the app developer’s.

With a Piota school app, you can remove barriers to parental engagement. Users can send content-rich messages, news, events and information straight to parents’ smart devices at the speed of an instant push notification”. Chris Moss, Piota.

Teacher Reviews:

What do headteachers say about Piota Apps?

“It has been a really effective easy way to communicate with parents.” Headteacher, London

“Being able to send unlimited messages and reminders directly to mobile phones as push notifications without worrying about the cost means there is hardly any missed communication.” Headteacher, Essex

“The app is brilliant, it transforms the way we communicate with parents and makes our communication much more effective.” Headteacher, Merseyside

“The forms and surveys section has revolutionised response rates, and being able to export the data provides fantastic evidence to show Ofsted about school to parent communication.” Headteacher, Essex

The Teacher Review Panel from The Educational App Store said: “A particularly nice feature is the ability to be able to conduct polls among parents.  This can help to encourage a dialogue between the school and its parents and show that it is responsive to its community’s needs.”

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Finding any solution to communicate with all parents is a challenge for most schools. Whilst some parents are hard to reach, others may want to know everything about their child when at school. Piota Apps offers the perfect solution, enabling schools to adapt and tailor information to suit individuals and groups of people. Piota has huge potential for schools, encouraging parents to engage with the daily experiences of their child, or at least have peace of mind that the information is there and available for them to see when it suits. (@TeacherToolkit)

Free Trial:

Piota offers schools the opportunity to see their fully customised school app before purchase. You can claim your free trial and demonstration on the Piota website. For those looking for further ways to engage parents in your school, you can download the Piota Parental Engagement Calendar.

For more information on how Piota Apps could improve communication for your school, please email hello@piota.co.uk, tweet @PiotaApps or visit the Piota website. If you’re going to the BETT Show 2017,  why not visit Piota at Stand H80?

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